"Indeed?" Lady Caroline's "indeed" was very crushing. "Well, either your information or your discretion must have been very much at fault. I must say, Miss Polehampton now strikes me as a woman of great discrimination of character. I will say good-morning, Miss Colwyn, and I think the acquaintance between my daughter and yourself had better be discontinued. It has certainly been, from beginning to end, an unsuitable and disastrous friendship."
"Before you go, Lady Caroline, will you kindly take the envelope away that you have left upon the table?" said Janetta, as haughtily as Lady Caroline herself could have spoken. "I certainly shall not take money from you if you believe such evil things of me. I have known nothing of the acquaintance between my cousin and Miss Adair; but after what you have said I will not accept anything at your hands."
"Then I am afraid it will have to remain on the table," said Lady Caroline, as she swept out of the room, "for I cannot take it back again."
Janetta caught up the envelope. One glance showed her that it contained a cheque. She tore it across and across, and was in time to place the fragments on the seat beside Lady Caroline, just before the carriage was driven away. She went back into the house with raised head and flaming cheeks, too angry and annoyed to settle down to work, too much hurt to be anything but restless and preoccupied. The reaction did not set in for some hours; but by six o'clock, when the children were all out of doors and her stepmother had gone to visit a friend, and Janetta had the house to herself, she lay down on a couch in the drawing-room with a feeling of intense exhaustion and fatigue. She was too tired almost to cry, but a tear welled up now and then, and was allowed to trickle quietly down her pale cheek. She was utterly wretched and depressed: the world seemed a dark place to her, especially when she considered that she had already lost one friend whom she had so long and so tenderly loved, and that she was not unlikely to lose another. For Wyvis might blame her—would blame her, probably—for what she had said to Lady Caroline.
A knock at the front door aroused her. It was a knock that she did not know; and she wondered at first whether one of the Adairs or one of the Brands were coming to visit her. She sat up and hastily rearranged her hair and dried her eyes. The charity orphan was within hearing and had gone to the door: it was she who presently flung open the door and announced, in awe-stricken tones—
"Sir Philip Hashley."
Janetta rose in some consternation. What did this visit portend? Had he also come to reproach her for her conduct to Margaret and Wyvis? For she surmised—chiefly from the way in which she had seen him follow Margaret with his eyes at the garden-party—that his old love was not dead.
He greeted her with his usual gentleness of manner, and sat down—not immediately facing her, as she was glad to think, scarcely realizing that he had at once seen the trouble in her face, and did not wish to embarrass her by a straightforward gaze. He gave her a little time in which to recover herself, too; he spoke of indifferent subjects in an indifferent tone, so that when five minutes had elapsed Janetta was quite herself again, and had begun to speculate upon her chance of an engagement to sing at another musical party.
"I hope Lady Ashley is well," she said, when at last a short pause came.
"Quite well, I thank you, and hoping to see you soon."